Bend over just a bit farther ....

Obama sells out to the domestic airline industry on European carbon fees.

The point is not that Obama is someone particularly bad, just not better than the other residents at 1600 have been.

Movie: Rise of the Guardians

Not bad for a kid movie. Beautiful animation and some bits of warmth and creativity. It was also fun to see how deliberately the movie was going after the international market.

More from A.O. Scott at the NYT who liked it just a bit less than I did.

Recommended if you are taking a kid.

David Friedman on anarcho-capitalism

Good stuff from DDF.

Joel Slemrod Holland Prize video

Hat tip: Jim Hines, who I believe is the motive force behind the video.

FT interview with Martha Stewart

I will confess that I did not really pay much attention to, nor have a very high opinion of, Martha Stewart until she was unjustly imprisoned in order to help advance Eliot Spitzer's career.

Now I am rather fascinated by her and her empire of domesticity. Much of what she promotes strikes me as tremendous wastes of time, but, you know, one should not criticize the harmless leisure activities of others.

In any case, the FT offers up an entertaining interview. I had no idea she is 71.

Geek imperialism

Hat tip: someone on Facebook

What a day for a daydream ...

Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation

Benjamin Baird, Jonathan Smallwood, Michael D. Mrazek, ,Julia W. Y. Kam, Michael S. Franklin1 and Jonathan W. Schooler

Psychological Science October 2012 23(10): 1117–1122

Abstract

Although anecdotes that creative thoughts often arise when one is engaged in an unrelated train of thought date back thousands of years, empirical research has not yet investigated this potentially critical source of inspiration. We used an incubation paradigm to assess whether performance on validated creativity problems (the Unusual Uses Task, or UUT) can be facilitated by engaging in either a demanding task or an undemanding task that maximizes mind wandering. Compared with engaging in a demanding task, rest, or no break, engaging in an undemanding task during an incubation period led to substantial improvements in performance on previously encountered problems. Critically, the context that improved performance after the incubation period was associated with higher levels of mind wandering but not with a greater number of explicitly directed thoughts about the UUT. These data suggest that engaging in simple external tasks that allow the mind to wander may facilitate creative problem solving.

Hat tip (including the title): Charlie Brown